Setting aside for a moment the questions of what constitutes “torture,” when are harsh methods justified in interrogation, and the effectiveness of such methods, one of the most galling aspects of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s majority report is its raging hypocrisy. Feigning a shock and outrage that would make even Captain Reynault blush with shame, Senate Democrats lead by Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) loudly denounced the CIA (and by extension the Bush administration) for employing tactics that amounted to torture.

Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s point man for counterterrorism between 2002 and 2004, told Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday that Democratic lawmakers now accusing the CIA of keeping Congress in the dark on some interrogation methods “knew exactly what we were doing.”

“I remember very clearly briefing [California Democrat] Nancy Pelosi in September of 2002,” he said, claiming he “briefed her specifically on the enhanced-interrogation techniques of Abu Zubayda. So she knew, back in September of 2002, every one of our enhanced interrogation techniques.”

“These people were fully aware of all of the techniques that were given to us and approved by the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice,” Rodriguez continued, saying that neither Nancy Pelosi nor other Democrats — with the exception of then–California congresswoman Jane Harman — “ever objected to the techniques at all.”

Senators knew, too; the article mentions Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in particular. But I’d like to know just how much Senator Feinstein knew and when she knew it. She’s been on the intelligence committee for years and was surely briefed. But it’s only now, with Democrats soon to lose control of the Senate and Feinstein her chairmanship of the committee, that she decides to rush out this hack-job of a report. I’ll repeat what I wrote in 2009, when Nancy Pelosi was the one screaming over harsh interrogation methods:

You want a truth commission, Mrs. Pelosi? Fine. Bring it on. Let’s have that full-throated discussion of “harsh” interrogation of terrorists who believe they’re doing Allah’s work when they carve off heads or fly planes into buildings and who’d dearly love to set off a nuclear weapon in the US. Let’s clear away the cobwebs of convenient amnesia to let the world know just how much you and your party members supported those same techniques, funding them year after year and even wondering why we weren’t doing more. Let’s bring out all the details of how those techniques saved Americans from horrible deaths and find out what the American people support: a government that recognizes that its highest, first duty is to protect and defend its citizens, or one willing to gut its intelligence service and put the people at risk, all in the name of a preening sanctimony that’s nothing more than a cover for a partisan hack job.

In most families I know, if your daughter abuses her cell-phone privileges, you punish her by taking it away for a while – a couple of days, a week, whatever. Maybe you even ground her if the offense was egregious.

A 13-year-old Saudi schoolgirl is to be given 90 lashes in front of her classmates after she was caught with a mobile camera phone.

The girl, who has not been named, was also sentenced to two months in jail by a court in the eastern city of Jubail.

She had assaulted her headmistress after being caught with the gadget which is banned in girl schools, said Al-Watan, a Saudi newspaper. The kingdom’s use of such punishments has been widely condemned by human rights organisations.

Three years ago 16 schoolchildren, aged between 12 and 18, were each sentenced to between 300 and 500 lashes for being aggressive to a teacher.

Under Saudi’s Sharia or Islamic law, flogging is mandatory for a number of moral offences such as adultery or being alone in the company of an unrelated person of the opposite sex. But it can also be used at the discretion of judges as an alternative or in addition to other punishments.

Al-Watan said a court in the northeastern Gulf port of Jubail had sentenced the girl to 90 lashes inside her school, followed by two months’ detention.

The punishment is harsher than tha dished out to some robbers and looters.

Okay, so she also “assaulted” the principal. At worst that merits expulsion and an assault charge, depending on the severity of the offense. But public torture followed by 60 days in jail? For a child?

Tell me again about the marvelous glories of Islamic law and justice. I love fantasies.

Asked if a confession obtained “by applying psychological, emotional and physical pressure” was “valid and considered credible according to Islam,” Mesbah-Yazdi replied: “Getting a confession from any person who is against the Velayat-e Faqih (“Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists”, or the regime of Iran’s mullahs) is permissible under any condition.” The ayatollah gave the identical answer when asked about confessions obtained through drugging the prisoner with opiates or addictive substances.

“Can an interrogator rape the prisoner in order to obtain a confession?” was the follow-up question posed to the Islamic cleric. Mesbah-Yazdi answered: “The necessary precaution is for the interrogator to perform a ritual washing first and say prayers while raping the prisoner. If the prisoner is female, it is permissible to rape through the vagina or anus. It is better not to have a witness present. If it is a male prisoner, then it’s acceptable for someone else to watch while the rape is committed.”

Yes, praying to Allah makes the rape okay. It becomes, then, a holy act. Remember that, kiddies. Speaking of children, what of a child born from this rape? The monstrous bastard spiritual leader had an answer:

One aspect of these permitted rapes troubled certain questioners: “What if the female prisoner gets pregnant? Is the child considered illegitimate?”

Mesbah-Yazdi answered: “The child borne to any weakling [a denigrating term for women – ed.] who is against the Supreme Leader is considered illegitimate, be it a result of rape by her interrogator or through intercourse with her husband, according to the written word in the Koran. However, if the child is raised by the jailer, then the child is considered a legitimate Shi’a Muslim.”

You might wonder what kind of person could say this sort of thing. We’ve met Mesbah-Yazdi before. As a member and leader of Hojjatiyeh faction in Iran, he can be considered at the radical edge of Shiite Islamism (emphasis added):

To understand the power and influence of Messbah-Yazdi, one needs to learn a bit about the Hojjatieh sect of Shi’ite Islam. The Hojjatiyeh movement was founded in the early ’50s by Mahmoud Halabi, a cleric of Arab ancestry and Iranian nationality. The movement believes in the imminent return of the Hidden Imam, Mehdi (a.k.a The Mahdi, the 12th Imam or Sawheb’o’zaman, which means the lord and master of all time). The Mahdi is the 12th descendant of the prophet Mohammad, whose reappearance is predicted for a time when the Muslims are suffering from disaster and injustice; true Islamic rule is possible only upon his return.

The Hojjatiyeh movement opposes the Shi’ite version of a Caliphate, the Velawyat’eh Fagheeh (which Amir Taheri translates as The Regency of the Theologians), which was a principle articulated by Khomeini. Therefore, in a July 1983 speech, Khomeini outlawed the movement and ordered the arrest of Hojjatiyeh supporters. Some he even ordered executed.

Contrary to the concept of Velawyat’eh Fagheeh, which states that all political power should be in the hands of a single leader, Hojjatiyeh claims that a collective leadership should rule until the Imam’s return. The movement’s economic views are liberal, which is the why it enjoys the support of traditional bazaar merchants and landowners; they object to any religiously-based official supervision.

Hojjatiyeh actively encourages its members to spread chaos and violence in society and the world at large, in order to hasten the return of the Twelfth Imam. The movement made the headlines on April 24, 1999, when its members attempted to assassinate the head of Tehran’s judicial system, Ali Razini. In late 2002 and early 2003 Hojjatiyeh increased its activity. In response, Iranian senior officials quickly issued a warning against the entrance of its members into government institutions.

You read that right: these loons want to bring about the Shiite version of the apocalypse; even Ayatollah Khomeini thought them dangerous. President Ahmadinejad, the “Man Who Would Be Nuclear-Armed,” belongs to a faction of the Hojjatiyeh, the so-called Jamkaran Group. And his spiritual leader is someone who advocates rape as an interrogation tool.

I don’t care who you are or what your cause is: if you belong to an organization that can do this to a child, you don’t just deserve to die, you need to die:

Like many young boys, Khidir loves playing with toy cars and wants to be a policeman like his father when he grows up. But it was his father’s very job that caused the tiny child to suffer the unimaginable.

Khidir was just 6 years old when he was savagely ripped away from his family, kidnapped by al Qaeda operatives in Iraq.

“They beat me with a shovel, they pulled my teeth out with pliers, they would go like this and pull it,” said Khidir, now 8, demonstrating with his hands. “And they would make me work on the farm gathering carrots.”

What followed was even more horrific, an ordeal that would last for two years in captivity. Khidir and his father spoke to CNN recently, more than half a year after his rescue by Iraqi police.

“This is where they hammered a nail into my leg and then they pulled it out,” he says, lifting up his pant leg to show a tiny wound.

He says his captors also pulled out each of his tiny fingernails, broke both his arms, and beat him repeatedly on the side of the head with a shovel. He still suffers chronic headaches. He remembers them laughing as they inflicted the pain.

“I would think about my mommy and daddy,” he replies, when asked how he managed to get through the agony.

By now anyone reading this blog has likely heard of the so-called torture memos, memoranda written by Justice Department lawyers soon after the 9/11 attacks and released several days ago by the Obama administration. They were commissioned to determine the boundaries of permissible interrogation techniques to be used on captured terrorists. Included among these methods was waterboarding, which, when revealed, was widely decried as torture. For the record, I agree with Ed Morrissey that the argument regarding waterboarding in the relevant memo is strained and forced to fit a desired conclusion: interrogators wanted a proven, last-ditch method available. However, a thoughtful reading of the relevant statute strongly suggests that waterboarding violates US law.

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques “led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.” KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that “information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave.’ ” In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

I live in Los Angeles. So do many people I work with, call “friend,” and care deeply about. While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed says the target was the downtown library tower, hijacked planes could have been crashed anywhere. I can easily imagine a plane commandeered at LAX turning north and flying straight up the San Diego Freeway to Westwood — plenty of tall buildings there, with thousands of infidels to kill for Allah. Or maybe Century City, or the Port of Los Angeles. Those unholy warriors could have struck anywhere, and thousands more would have died.

I’m glad they waterboarded them.

Oh, I can hear it now. Some starry-eyed do-gooder will whine that torture is immoral, that it lowers us to the enemy’s level. Or maybe some sanctimonious prat will sniff and remind us that torture is against international law. To both of them I say “pull your heads out of your backsides and join the real world.”

The immorality argument is just plain stupid. Let me pose this question. If you have reason to believe a catastrophic attack could take place at any time and that someone you’re holding has information that could prevent it, and that you have no other way to get that information before the attack takes place, what would you do: would you keep your conscience lily-white and run the real risk of thousands of dead innocents, or would you subject your suspect to a few minutes of agony to save those lives, knowing that he would not die or suffer permanent harm? That is the choice faced by American interrogators in the weeks and months after 9/11, and the choice they made saved many, many people from horrible deaths.

Probably including me.

If, on the other hand, you chose to protect your conscience, I put it to you that your refusal to torture in this kind of a situation is rank immorality. You would prefer your peace of mind to the lives of everyone else around you? You’re no better than the guy flying the plane.

And the fool hiding behind the letter of the law? Same problem. You would rather people die than see your precious law broken, law that is meant to be a reflection of our morality, not supersede it. If the law says we can’t use “enhanced techniques” to save lives in imminent danger, then the law is an ass. And the law needs to be changed to reflect the real world, not some fantasyland that exists only in movies or novels — or law review articles.

Bear in mind, I’m not saying torture should be used in all cases, nor even many. But, in a lit-fuse scenario when we have a technique of proven effectiveness available — yes, waterboard him, and keep doing it until he talks. It isn’t nice, it isn’t pleasant, it won’t make us liked in the world, but it would be the only moral thing to do.

Like I said, I’m grateful they tortured him. You should be, too.

UPDATE 11/12/10: While I say above that waterboarding seems to cross the line of legality, I’ve been persuaded by the arguments made by Marc Thiessen in his book Courting Disaster, specifically Chapter 5: the “enhanced techniques” used, including waterboarding, are not torture as defined by the law. I highly recommend his book for anyone who wants to be informed in this debate.